Night & Demons (26 page)

For the night we dragged the lesser ships including the
Service
ashore stern first. There was a sand beach and it appeared that the bottom sloped rather gently in most places. A channel of some sort, far too great not to be natural, led straight seaward from the pier. The fiver, too massive for us to beach it, was lashed to the pier with some difficulty as it seemed that there never had been any bollards or other provision for docking ships. Between the bench and anchors the
Dominator
was adequately held, but it seemed a queer thing to some.

A few men spent the night searching, but for my own part I felt that sunshine and a clear head were better comrades than enthusiasm and stretched out on the beach. Events proved me right for dawn and the third hour had come before more gold was found.

When the discovery came it made up for the delay by its sheer magnitude. While I led a party through a ruin on the west of the city, which was laid out as a semicircle with streets raying out from the pier, someone in the far quadrant tugged on a bronze ring and raised a shout that soon had almost everyone milling around him.

When I finally got close enough to see what had been found—it wasn’t until crewmen had begun to empty it—I saw a huge underground room, bare but for the tons of gold jewelry scattered over its floor. It was circular and reached by eight staircases around the rim, the only integral marring of its emptiness. A man writhed in mosaic at the bottom of the stairs at which I stood. The design was continued in a widening wavy line leading toward the center. It was too far and too dark to see what lay there or at the other entrances, and I did not care to remain in the room. Perhaps it was a theatre of some sort, though there seemed no provision for ventilation; certainly the jewelry had not been stored there. Yet why would thousands of people have packed the great room, then closed the doors and died so many years ago that not even bones remained? For thus it must have happened. I am not a philosopher; say only that we met stranger sights before we were clear of the port.

During the day three more chambers were found; it was easier when we knew what to look for. There was gold aplenty; in fact, there was more than perhaps the ships could safely hold. The sailing master of the
Dominator
held several angry conclaves with high officers but to no avail: gold continued to stream into the fiver’s hold.

We had the
Flyer
loaded before the evening meal. This was poor enough, dried fish and bitter fruit, but the gold gave it the savor of ambrosia. We had not been able to fish as normally and the hunting parties found nothing but a few birds that graced the Admiral’s table. Perhaps they had spent more time looking for gold than for food; still, the jungle appeared more barren than expected.

Work continued for most of the next day; the Admiral seemed bound to leave no scrap of value behind him though it meant he must follow it to the sea bottom. Antiopas was a sensible man for all his lubberliness, and when the bosun pronounced us loaded to the limits of safety he refused to have more aboard us. There was no small sparking of tempers at his announcement, but because Antiopas had high connections indeed, no one cared to overrule him on a point bearing on his own command’s safety. Not, at least, when he was so obviously correct.

As a result, we of the
Flyer
’s crew were free while others hauled metal aboard. I proposed a genuine exploring jaunt—not just a search for more gold. The captain gave permission to any who cared to go though he was of two minds himself, fearing the ship might be overloaded in his absence. In the end he decided that he could easily enough dump such excess over the side if it came to that and joined us.

We were six altogether, Antiopas and the bosun, and four of us crewmen, more adventurous or more bored. We followed the central street, heading with unspoken agreement for the huge domed structure on the edge of the jungle. Clearly it was a temple or palace, more likely the former, and when a people dies as this one had, one wonders what gods it had worshipped. The jungle had recovered everything and the state of the road made me wish I had brought along a chopper. In some spots saplings had displaced paving blocks and had grown into trees, and vines covered practically everything.

The distance was greater than expected as well as being fatiguing; the enormous size of the dome had made it seem deceptively close. When at last we reached the treble base of the structure we all were spent and rested a while in the shade of the dome.

Without any particular intent I rubbed a patch of stone clear of vegetation. The result was disquieting: a round, slit-pupiled eye glared at me from the center of a nest of carven swirls. A cat, I mused, but didn’t care to look at the decoration again. To avoid it I started climbing the steps to the yawning portal and the others followed.

There was little left of the bronze doors, but the building itself, which was black and not of marble, had been very well preserved. The jungle had made few inroads on the interior, perhaps because relatively little light came through the top of the dome which was open save for a flat ellipse that spanned it. It could have been for structural reasons—I know little of domes, barbaric, inward straining things that they are—but the effect was unpleasantly similar to the carven eye outside. We could see well enough when our eyes adjusted, however. Much of the floor had been cut away in a pattern of swirls like that surrounding the eye graven on the plinth. The central portion, directly under the dome’s center, had a small platform raised like an altar but the floor around it was sunken also.

“A sunburst, do you suppose?” the captain asked.

“I saw a carving outside,” I replied. “It looked like some kind of eye.”

“If this isn’t the damnedest thing,” Hylas said. “How do you get to the altar?”

I walked a few steps around the hall to get a different view. It was just as the bosun said: the altar was completely separated from the walkway around the edge of the building by a sunken area some ten feet deep. Then a sailor jumped down and made another discovery.

“Look, a drain,” he called. “This whole thing must’a been a pool.”

We all looked where he stood beside a stone grating in the sunken part.

“Maybe for sacrifices?” someone suggested, thinking of the Orphic rites in which the communicants knelt beneath a grate while the victims were slaughtered above them.

“Zeus, no,” the discoverer disagreed, peering through the grate. “I can’t even see bottom.”

“Say, there’s something on the altar,” somebody called.

A shaft of sunlight was splashing from a green gem of some sort on the altar. None of us could see just what it was because of the dazzle but we all had hopes of a huge emerald.

“Did anybody bring a rope?” I asked, and blank looks answered me. “Well, who’ll give me a boost, then?”

Leon, a brawny fellow and just the man for the job, was willing and we jumped down into the empty pool with the others following us. The central orb was surfaced and drained just as the tapered, recurved arms had been; neither gave any clue to its purpose.

The altar was on a floor-height pedestal, round and about four feet in diameter. Since the altar itself was rectangular there would be no trouble standing if I could mount to begin with. After a moment’s discussion Leon braced himself against the pedestal with one hip jutting. I took a short run and jumped from his hip to shoulder, then swung myself up in front of the altar. There was an awkward piece of balancing for a moment since the ledge was only a foot and a half wide at most, but there was no need of a second attempt.

My first feelings on seeing the stone were merely of disappointment. It was a delicate piece of carving about the size of my fist, but the material was only some sort of glass. A second glance changed my disappointment to horror; I finally recognized the temple’s motif. Dropping the little figurine into my tunic I leaped down beside Leon again.

“What’s it worth?” he questioned eagerly.

“Damn little,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

We padded across the smooth floor to the others who had managed to pry up a grating with their spears.

“Well, let’s see it,” Antiopas demanded. I dropped the little stone in his palm.

“By Castor!” he swore. “A glass octopus.”

“Hell of a thing for a temple,” somebody muttered. “Do you s’pose it belongs here?”

“Take another look at the pool,” I said, “or these eye designs all over. Eight arms and a cat slitted eye; that’s what they worshipped, all right.”

“And that explains what this pool was for,” the captain added.

Leon blinked and looked shocked. He’d been a Highlander raised and I don’t think he much cared to be in an octopus pool, even after the beasts were long gone. Well, I wasn’t too happy about it, either.

“Captain!” one of the men called. “There’s noises down here.”

We all gathered around the drain, uneasily aware that we had to climb a ten-foot wall to leave.

“Just water sloshing down there,” Hylas said. “It’s what you’d expect under a drain.”

“A long way down,” Antiopas said thoughtfully.

There was a flicker of yellow in the depths.

“Zeus Father and Savior!” cried Antiopas, leaping back as we all did.

Then, while the rest of us stood in trembling panic, his face cleared and he began to laugh, pointing at the top of the dome.

“The reflection,” I gasped in sudden understanding. “It wasn’t an eye, it was just a reflection of the skylight in the water.”

No one was quite sure what happened then because we all were looking up when Hylas screamed and pitched through the opening. There was a splash, or perhaps that had come before; when I instinctively peered over the edge there was nothing below but a roil of bubbles.

We lifted each other out in tense silence, all but Leon, that is, who babbled to himself of what he had seen at the corner of his eye. He screamed during the night and my own dreams were bloody and mare-wracked until a gray dawn awoke me.

The captain was waiting when I opened my eyes. “Sleep well?” he asked.

I winced. “And yourself?”

He turned his palms up. “It was bad enough when I only dreamed of drowning. Though it looks as if that too may come today.”

I glanced at the sky. It marched solidly with black cumuli though the wind was still for the nonce.

“We’ll not set out today,” I said.

“Really? You’re bosun now, you know, and I’ll take your word for it—but the
Dominator
seems to be making ready.”

I nodded. “The Admiral wants some sea room,” I guessed. “Remember, we’ve no proper harbor here and the fiver can’t be beached. He’ll try to keep her bow to the storm with the oars and take no chance of her being pounded to pieces against the shore. Though for my own part, I’d worry more that the wallowing slut’s keel would split and spill me in the middle of it.”

A messenger bore out my prediction within the hour and the
Dominator
put out alone. The storm refused to break, however, and she rode a half-mile out on a smooth sea while the sultry heat grew more and more oppressive. The water was so calm that Antiopas and I, sitting in the bows of the
Flyer,
could see the channel in the sea bottom as a straight dark streak in the green.

“Where do you suppose it leads?” he asked.

“Where does a mountain lead?” I replied with a shrug.

Antiopas persisted. “This end leads to the pier,” he said. “At least that far; the other end . . . .”

He was voicing thoughts that had occurred to me also. “The drains,” I said. “I suppose they have to lead somewhere.”

Neither of us spoke for a while. When I did, I deliberately avoided what both of us were thinking of.

“Pity the baggars below decks on her,” I said, thumbing toward the penteres.

“Pity the all of us, damned to this voyage,” Antiopas replied and fumbled in his pouch. “Do you suppose there is any value to this?” he continued, bringing out the octopus figure.

I took a closer look at the little idol, hefting it in my hand. “Just glass,” I answered. “Not very pretty, the gods know. Besides, I don’t much like the idea of carrying other people’s gods around. Why don’t we just drop it over the side and be done?”

“Images of gods,” Antiopas corrected me. “A stone is not the god but the symbol of the god.”

Then why go to temples if the gods aren’t there? I thought but said nothing and watched the play of light within the figurine. The glass was so smooth that it slipped in my grasp and a tiny drop of blood formed where one of the arms pricked me.

“Castor!” Antiopas swore, “The
Dominator
’s moving; she’s heading in. Now what under heaven for?”

I looked up from the idol. The surface had been roiled by the fiver’s oars and there was another patch of foam far beyond her, almost on the horizon from where we sat though much nearer the penteres. I rose and pointed to it without speaking.

Antiopas stood, too, and his face had gone white. One part of my mind remembered the little brown men telling us how these seas could rise in minutes, horizon to horizon, and sweep everything beneath them. Still I felt no fear, neither of that nor of what I knew in truth was approaching. The idol burned in my palm.

All along the shore men were staring in confusion at the
Dominator,
whose battlegong was clanging. As we watched, the sea darkened in front of the penteres and there was another splash of foam.

“That’s no wave—” Antiopas began and broke off in horror to stare at the figurine in my hand. “Herakles who purged the world,” he whispered, “be with us now.”

Some started to run then but I think only the two of us realized what was coming. The crew of the
Service
was readying the catapult on her forecastle. Although the Admiral must have realized by then that the
Dominator
was not the quarry, the great fiver continued to cut through the sea pursuing now instead of fleeing.

The third time it arose it was half the distance between the shore and the swiftly approaching
Dominator.
The sacklike body squirmed—gods, it was huge!—to bring one slit-pupiled eye around to glare at us. Then it dived with another spurt of foam.